As a year draws to an end, I’m left where I always am the past four years. Remembering a life that will no longer be as I participate in a world that I never imagined without my son, Sam, who died from an accidental overdose in 2014 after being sold a synthetic drug… thinking all along he was taking Acid, something that would pass through his system before he was possibly subject to a random drug screen at high school being an athlete. Instead, he died overnight. Experimenting? Bad choice? Kid choice? What is my choice four years later? What is his brother’s choice four years later? Our choice is loving someone we lost, a very easy choice actually; a choice that will always be as we know who we’ve lost, what we’ve lost and what will never be again.

As the most sobering of the year’s holidays are behind us, we look to the new year with hope. Hope for continued love. Hope for grace and mercy. And in our darkest hours that still arise, just hope. Life is a blessing.

Love and be loved as freely as the world around us and when the storm comes, hunker down and dare to love some more. #muchlovetosam